The World Bank has now joined other major international organizations which had upwardly revised their prior expectations regarding the rate of economic growth in Hungary, adding 0.5 percentage points to their previous prognosis of June 2018.

In the Global Economic Prospects published earlier today, the international expert team of the World Bank see full-year GDP growth at as much as 4.6 percent for 2018.

The subtitle of the organization’s study, “Darkening Skies”, indicate that analysts are predicting a number of factors that signal decelerating global growth. The prognosis shows a global economic growth rate of 2.9 percent for 2019 and 2.8 percent for 2020. The study forecasts that last year’s rapid expansion is set to be followed by a gradual slow-down and major risks. Hungary’s growth rate is seen as likely to buck the trend of slower expansion.

Moderate inflation and low interest rates will continue to have a favourable impact on growth in Hungary, the analysis notes. As experts of the Ministry of Finance have commented, rising domestic consumption, demand for market services and a steadily rising investment rate are helping the Hungarian economy maintain the strong growth momentum. These factors are expected to ensure that the rate of economic growth, currently well above 4 percent of GDP, will remain some 4 percent in coming years. The Ministry of Finance predicts that the World Bank may also upwardly revise the current cautious growth estimate for the coming years, after coming to recognize the achievements of the Hungarian economy, given the fact that the organization raised its growth prognosis for the year 2018 by 0.8 percentage points over the past 12 months.

The Ministry of Finance points out that the government debt-to-GDP ratio has been declining steadily since 2011. The ratio’s decrease of some 10 percent over the past seven years is one of the best figures among the EU member states.

Referring to the study published today, the Ministry draws attention to the fact that last autumn almost every major international organization raised their prior GDP growth estimates for Hungary: the European Commission added 0.3 percentage points, the OECD and the IMF 0.2 percentage points each and the EBRD 0.5 percentage points.

(Ministry of Finance)